Boris & Ian Astbury – BXI EP (Southern Lord)
I played my cassette copy of The Cult‘s Love enough times in high school that the oxide wore off. Despite this, the record has enough moments of ridiculous hippie pandering that I’m not able to ward off its distracters.
Whatever. I still think it’s great and feel that everything the band has done since then pales in comparison.
While I had the good fortune not to have to go to war in Southeast Asia during my teens, some of my friends were not so lucky. (Luck, it should be noted, was involved because there was a lottery system enacted, but in its case, the “prize” wasn’t exactly the same as striking it rich via the Big Game or Powerball.) Many of the stories they came back with were too grotesque to contemplate—Coppola’s Apocalypse Now wasn’t an exaggeration or caricature, it seems. One of the things that invariably came up in their stories was the music in the bars.
